38
DEFINING MEMES Presented By: Dr. Robert Finkelstein President, Robotic Technology Inc. 11424 Palatine Drive Potomac, MD 20854-1451 Phone: 301-983-4194 ; Fax: 301-983-3921 [email protected] Presented To: The Second Symposium on Memetics Memory, Social Networks, and Language Probing the Meme Hypothesis II Victoria College, University of Toronto 15-17 May 2008

DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

Embed Size (px)

Citation preview

Page 1: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

DEFINING MEMES

Presented By:

Dr. Robert Finkelstein

President, Robotic Technology Inc.

11424 Palatine Drive

Potomac, MD 20854-1451

Phone: 301-983-4194 ; Fax: 301-983-3921

[email protected]

Presented To:

The Second Symposium on Memetics

Memory, Social Networks, and Language

Probing the Meme Hypothesis II

Victoria College, University of Toronto

15-17 May 2008

Page 2: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

MEMETICS AS A SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINE

Since Dawkins‟ revelation

Coterie of proponents, skeptics,

opponents

No coherent, well-funded,

significant development of

concept

No refutation

Memetics needs

A general theory – a theoretical

foundation for development of a

scientific discipline, not pseudo-

science

Better focus, pragmatic definition

Ability to make testable

predictions & falsifiable

hypotheses

Page 3: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

MEMETICS AS A SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINE

The discrete meme must be

defined, identified, and

distinguished in the near-

continuum of information

Just as the discrete gene can be

identified (more or less) in long

string of DNA nucleotides

Quantitative basis for memes

must be established, e.g.,

Physiological effects

Information theory and entropy

Genetic, memetic, and

evolutionary algorithms

Modeling and simulation

Neuroeconomics tools

Page 4: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

WHY DEFINE MEMES?

Some say a crisp definition of

“unit of information” or “unit of

cultural transmission” is not

critical to a theory of memes

E.g., Darwin‟s Theory of Evolution

was scientifically useful before

anyone knew about genes and

DNA

But a pragmatic definition and

associated metrics would provide

a better foundation for research

and the ability to make testable

predictions and falsifiable

hypotheses, and control effects

Which DNA and genetic

engineering now provides to

Darwin‟s Theory

Memetic engineering or applied

memetics

Page 5: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

MEME DEFINITIONS

Extensive memetics literature reveals a plethora of definitions for the

meme, with most being variations of Dawkins original notion

Most agree that a meme is a unit (whatever that means) of cultural

transmission (or a unit of information - whatever that means), where

culture may be defined as the total pattern of behavior (and its products) of

a population of agents, embodied in thought, behavior, and artifacts, and

dependent upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to

succeeding generations

None of these definitions is sufficient to allow a meme to be clearly

recognized or measured

Page 6: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

EXAMPLE EXTANT MEME DEFINITIONS

A self-reproducing and propagating

information structure analogous to a

gene in biology

A unit of cultural transmission (or a unit

of imitation) that is a replicator that

propagates themselves in the meme

pool leaping from brain to brain via (in

a broad sense) imitation; examples:

“tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes

fashions, ways of making pots or of

building arches”

Ideas that program for their own

retransmission or propagation

Actively contagious idea or thought

Shared elements of a culture learned

through imitation from others – with

culture being defined rather broadly to

include ideas, behaviors, and physical

objects

Page 7: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

EXAMPLE EXTANT MEME DEFINITIONS

An element of a culture that may be

considered to be passed on by non-

genetic means, especially imitation

Whatever is passed on by imitation

Constellations of activated and non-

activated synapses within neural

memory networks

Information patterns infecting human

minds

While the internal meme is equivalent

to the genotype, its expression in

behavior (or the way it affects things

in its environment) is its phenotype

“It Ain‟t Over „Till The Fat Lady Sings”

Page 8: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

EXAMPLE EXTANT MEME DEFINITIONS

Any information that is copied from

person to person or between books,

computers, or other storage devices.

Many mental contents are not

memes because they are not

acquired by imitation or copying,

including perceptions, visual

memories, and emotional feelings.

Skills or knowledge acquired by

ordinary learning are not memes

A unit of cultural information; a piece

of knowledge, an idea [with an

anchor, carrier, and payload]

Biological Definition: Basic unit of

cultural transmission, or imitation

Psychological definition: The unit of

cultural heredity analogous to the

gene; the internal representation of

knowledge

Page 9: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

EXAMPLE EXTANT MEME DEFINITIONS

Cognitive definition: An idea, the

kind of complex idea that forms itself

into a distinctive memorable unit,

spread by vehicles that are physical

manifestations of the meme

Working definition: A unit of

information in a mind whose

existence influences events such

that more copies of itself get created

in other minds

A memory item, or portion of an

organisms neurally-stored

information, identified using the

abstraction system of the observer,

whose instantiation depended

critically on causation by prior

instantiation of the same memory

item in one or more other organisms‟

nervous systems

Page 10: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

EXAMPLE EXTANT MEME DEFINITIONS

A heterogeneous class of

entities, primarily including

(observable) behavior and

artifacts

An element of culture that may

be considered to be passed on

by non-genetic means,

especially imitation

The least unit of socio-cultural

information relative to a

selection process that has

favorable or unfavorable

selection bias that exceeds its

endogenous tendency to

change

Page 11: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

EXAMPLE EXTANT MEME DEFINITIONS

Cultural replicators propagated through

imitation, undergoing a process of

selection, and standing to be selected not

because they benefit their human carriers,

but because they benefit themselves

A symbolic representation of any state of

affairs, either internal and implemented in

the mind or external implemented in an

external (non-mental) objects such as

artifacts, products, behaviors

Replicating conceptual units – the largest

reliably replicating unit within our text

corpus

A (cognitive) information-structure able to

replicate using human hosts and to

influence their behavior to promote

replication

Page 12: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

EXAMPLE EXTANT MEME DEFINITIONS

Cultural information units that are the

smallest elements that replicate

themselves with reliability and

fecundity

A rule of behavior, encoded by

functional neuronal groups or

pathways. [Behavior is action, whether

mental or physical. Ideas such as tying

shoe-laces or opening a door represent

rules of physical action, i.e., rules of

patterned neural-muscular interaction.

Concepts such as apple, seven, or

causality, represent rules of mental

action, or rules of cognition, i.e., rules

of patterned neural-neural interaction.

Hence, physical movement is governed

by memes which represent rules of

physical action and thought is

governed by memes which represent

rules of mental action]

Page 13: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

EXAMPLE EXTANT MEME DEFINITIONS

Any kind, amount, and

configuration of information in

culture that shows both variation

and coherent transmission

A pattern of information (a state

within a space of possible states)]

A unit of cultural information as it

is represented in the brain

An idea, behavior, style, or usage

that spreads from person to

person within a culture

Page 14: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

EXAMPLE EXTANT MEME DEFINITIONS

A unit of information residing in

a brain

An observable cultural

phenomenon, such as a

behavior, artifact or an objective

piece of information, which is

copied, imitated or learned, and

thus may replicate within a

cultural system. Objective

information includes

instructions, norms, rules,

institutions and social practices

provided they are observable

A pattern of information, one

that happens to have evolved a

form which induces people to

repeat that pattern

Page 15: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

EXAMPLE EXTANT MEME DEFINITIONS

A contagious information pattern that replicates

by parasitically infecting human minds and

altering their behavior, causing them to propagate

the pattern. Individual slogans, catch-phrases,

melodies, icons, inventions, and fashions are

typical memes. An idea or information pattern is

not a meme until it causes someone to replicate it,

to repeat it to someone else. All transmitted

knowledge is memetic

The smallest idea that can copy itself while

remaining self contained and intact … essentially

sets of instructions that can be followed to

produce behavior. Instructions can be encoded in

either: 1) musical notation; 2) written text; 3)

visible (or vocal) action; 4) the neural structure of

the brain; 5) digitized structures in a computer

The least unit of socio-cultural information

relative to a selection process that has favorable

or unfavorable selection bias that exceeds its

endogenous tendency to change

Page 16: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

OUR PRAGMATIC DEFINITION OF MEME

We created a pragmatic

definition of a meme

To elicit comments and

improvements

Eventually converge to a

canonical definition that

will be useful in

establishing a scientific

basis for memetics

Page 17: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

OUR PRAGMATIC DEFINITION OF MEME

A meme is information transmitted by one or more primary sources to

recipients who, as secondary sources, retransmit the information to at

least an order of magnitude more recipients than primary sources,

where propagation persists at least ten hours and the information has

observable impact in addition to its transmission

To distinguish a meme from other sorts of information (e.g., from common

daily utterances), we invoke an order of magnitude rule and place an

emphasis on the necessity of a threshold for propagation and persistence

Page 18: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

OUR PRAGMATIC DEFINITION OF MEME

Information: Claude Shannon‟s

definition: information is that which

reduces uncertainty

The difference between two states

of uncertainty before and after a

message has been received

A message carries information

inasmuch as it conveys something

not already known

The same message can have

different influence or impacts,

depending on the states of the

recipients; a meme, as a subset of

information, could have different

consequences for different

recipients

Page 19: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

MEMETIC METRICS AND SUBMETRICS

MEMETIC METRICSMEMETIC METRICS

PROPAGATION PERSISTENCE ENTROPY IMPACT

Number OfRecipients

Type OfRecipients

Dispersion OfRecipients

Duration OfTransmission

Duration OfMemory

Small<100K Bits

Medium<100M Bits

Large>100M Bits

IndividualConsequence

SocietalConsequence

We defined metrics and submetrics for evaluating memes

Page 20: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

CHARACTERIZATION OF MEME PROPAGATION AND

PERSISTENCE (MINIMUMS)

LEVEL

(Order of Magnitude)

PROPAGATION

(NO. OF PEOPLE)

PERSISTENCE

No. Hours No. Years

EXAMPLE CHARACTERIZATION

(Minimal Meme)

0 1 1 Origin of meme

1 10 10 Neighborhood gossip

2 100 100 Newspaper article

3 1,000 1000 0.1 Urban legend

4 10,000 10000 1 Cookbook

5 100,000 100000 10 Fundamentalist insurgency

6 1,000,000 1000000 100 Political ideology

7 10,000,000 10000000 1,000 Major religious canon

8 100,000,000 100000000 10,000 Instructions on growing wheat

9 1,000,000,000 1000000000 100,000 Human burial ritual

10 10,000,000,000 10000000000 1,000,000 Instructions on making flint cutting tool

Page 21: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

ENTROPY AND INFORMATION

Entropy as a metric of

information: Claude Shannon‟s

mathematical theory of

communication measures the

amount of information in any

message using a function

identical to that of Boltzmann‟s

formulation of entropy

The use of this entropy is

noncontroversial as long as it is

used to measure the freedom of

choice in messages and not

semantic content (i.e., a specific

message is selected from a

larger set)

Page 22: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

ENTROPY AND INFORMATION Example: information (entropy) needed to select one word out of a

vocabulary of 200 words is 7.6 bits (S = log2 200 = 7.6 bits)

That is, the word is within the first 100 words or the second 100 words

It takes one bit to determine that, or one guess to as to which of the two

sets it was in - if the word is in the first 100 words, it takes another bit

(guess) to determine which of the two sets of 50 words it is in; and so on

It takes between 7 and 8 bits (guesses) to find the one word in 200 words

Likewise, a 50-word meme requires 380 bits (for a 200-word vocabulary).

Nothing is indicated about the meaning or significance of the message that

results from selecting and stringing together the 50 words

Page 23: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

ENTROPY AND INFORMATION

Because of its logarithmic

nature, the quantity of

information (entropy) needed

to isolate one item remains

very modest as the total set of

items increases enormously

If, for example, the sample

space is a 20,000-word

vocabulary, a 50-word meme

requires only 714 bits

Page 24: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

ENTROPY AND INFORMATION A problem arises when entropy is used as a

measure of informational order and disorder

For example, a manager has a desk with

mounds of paper covering it - is this a high or

low entropy case?

The manager‟s associate cannot find a paper

he is searching for until he has made a large

number of guesses, separating the piles of

papers – a very high entropy case

But the manager knows exactly where every

paper is located – the mounds of paper are

quite organized in her mind; it would take her

no guesses to find the crucial paper – a very

low entropy case

Both cases concern the same set of items,

but two different observers

Entropy then becomes a subjective measure

of information (or a measure of the

information contained in the brain of the

observer), and this can be a disturbing

concept to some

Page 25: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

ENTROPY AND INFORMATION

The entropy of a meme, whether long or

short, can be estimated and calculated

from the individual letters or symbols

Based on the total number in the originating

set, or from the individual words, based on

the vocabulary in the originating set

Example: the Oxford English Dictionary

contains 616,500 words and spelling bee

contestants study perhaps 614,000 of those

words; but, in reality, the average

vocabulary of an American English speaker

is estimated by various linguists as between

10,000 and 20,000 words, or optimistically

between 50,000 and 70,000 words)

The average American would actively use

only a fraction of that vocabulary

Page 26: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

ENTROPY AND INFORMATION

Typically, there are about 800 words per

page with 12-point Times Roman font,

although publications vary considerably in

the number of words, based on page size,

format, and number of pages

Shannon calculated the entropy per letter of

an 8-letter chunk of English as 2.3 bits per

letter, using a 26-character set (although a

76-symbol, including 26 letters, set might be

generally more appropriate)

Assuming a vocabulary of 30,000 words the

entropy of a single word is about 15 bits (S =

log2 30,000 = 15 bits)

The following Table shows the entropy as a

function of the number of (English) words in

memes

Most memes of military worth are 10 – 100,000

words, or an entropy of 150 – 1,5000,000 bits

Page 27: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

ENTROPY AS A FUNCTION OF MEME SIZE

MEME SIZE (Words) MEME SIZE

(No. of Pages)

ENTROPY

(Bits)

EXAMPLE CHARACTERIZATIONS

(Approximate)

1 0.001 15 Exclamation (Hooah! Oorah! Allah!)

10 0.01 150 Catchphrase, Slogan, Exhortation (Remember the

Maine! Death to America! Jesus loves you! When it

absolutely, positively has to get there overnight! You’ll

wonder where the yellow went when you brush your

teeth with Pepsodent!)

100 0.1 1,500 Sound-bite, Prayer, Incitement, Joke

1,000 1 15,000 Flyer, Poster, Advertisement, Notice, Propaganda

10,0000 10 150,000 Political speech, Sermon, Polemic, Article, Blog

100,000 100 1,500,000 Field manual, Ideological indoctrination, Manifesto

1,000,000 1,000 15,000,000 Bible, Koran, Abridged dictionary

10,000,000 10,000 150,000,000 Unabridged dictionary, Religious canon

100,000,000 100,000 1,500,000,000 Federal Register, Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia

1,000,000,000 1,000,000 15,000,000,000 Instructions for building nuclear submarine or Apollo

spacecraft

Page 28: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

MEMETIC METRICS AND SUBMETRICS

A Threshold Metric is Propagation

The submetrics for Propagation are

Number of Recipients

Type of Recipients and

Dispersion of Recipients

Depending on the problem under consideration, the type of recipients might be characterized or categorized by their economic, social, or educational class, ethnicity or culture, religion, gender, age, tribe, politics, etc.

Depending on the problem under consideration, the dispersion of recipients might categorized as local, tribal, familial, regional, national, global, etc.

Page 29: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

MEMETIC METRICS AND SUBMETRICS

Another Threshold Metric is

Persistence

The submetrics for Persistence

distinguish between the Duration of

Transmission of the meme and Duration

in Memory or storage

Submetrics for metric Entropy (or size)

Distinguish among Small, Medium, and

Large, which are (using an order of

magnitude rule) characterized as less

than or equal to 100K bits, less than or

equal to 100M bits, and greater than 100

M bits, respectively

Submetrics for metric Impact

Distinguish between the impact (or

potential impact) of the meme on the

individual (individual consequence) and

its impact (or potential impact) on

society as a whole (societal

consequence)

Page 30: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

MEMETIC METRICS AND SUBMETRICS

MEMETIC METRICSMEMETIC METRICS

PROPAGATION PERSISTENCE ENTROPY IMPACT

Number OfRecipients

Type OfRecipients

Dispersion OfRecipients

Duration OfTransmission

Duration OfMemory

Small<100K Bits

Medium<100M Bits

Large>100M Bits

IndividualConsequence

SocietalConsequence

Page 31: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

MEMETIC METRICS AND SUBMETRICS

Memetic metrics were weighted using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)

The AHP is used to determine the relative importance (weights or priorities) of the metrics, and can be used to evaluate (score or prioritize) alternative memes and then rank-order them

The AHP simplifies decision processes through problem structuring, decomposition and pairwise comparisons and can accommodate both quantitative and subjective inputs, merge them into single overall measure for ranking alternative choices (the underlying mathematics mostly involves solving for matrix Eigenvalues)

After defining metrics and submetrics, pairwise comparisons and a numerical scoring system are used to weight the metrics and submetrics, then evaluate and rank alternative memes against the weighted metrics and submetrics

Page 32: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

MEMETIC METRICS AND SUBMETRICS

Page 33: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

WEIGHTED METRICS AND SUBMETRICS

The Propagation metric is deemed more

important (weighted more) than Persistence (and

the other metrics) because it is more easily

measured or estimated and more relevant

concerning memes of military worth, especially

in the near-term

The Impact metric is deemed somewhat less

important than Persistence because it is more

difficult to measure, especially in the real-world,

in the near-term (in a model, with a God‟s-eye

view, Impact might be considered the most

important metric)

The Entropy metric is deemed least important

because the size of the meme, while influential,

is not critical in its ability to propagate, persist,

and impact (alter behavior), especially for digital

media (e.g., images and videos)

Page 34: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

WEIGHTED METRICS AND SUBMETRICS

For the Propagation submetrics,

the Number of Recipients is more

heavily weighted than the Type or

Dispersion of Recipients

submetrics because it is more

easily measured than the other

submetrics and it alone can serve

as a useful crude indicator of

successful propagation

The Type and Dispersion of

Recipients are demographic details

which refine the efficacy of the

meme‟s dispersion but are not as

important as the sheer Number of

Recipients

Page 35: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

WEIGHTED METRICS AND SUBMETRICS

For the Persistence submetrics,

the Duration of the Transmission of

the meme is deemed somewhat

more important than Duration of

the Memory of the meme because

It is easier to measure and more

important for meme‟s of immediate

military worth

Page 36: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

WEIGHTED METRICS AND SUBMETRICS

For the Entropy submetrics, the Small

categorization is deemed more

important than Medium, which is

deemed more important than Large

Despite meme size being less important

with digital media, the human brain is

still size and retention limited and is

generally more responsive to briefer

memes

For Impact submetrics, the Societal

Consequences of memes are deemed

more important than the Individual

Consequences (e.g., the altered

behavior of many is generally of

greater consequence than that of a

single person, even if a single person

may sometimes alter history)

Page 37: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

PROSPECTIVE EXPERIMENTAL TOOLS AND

TECHNIQUES

Surveys and interviews

Viral (buzz) marketing

Information theory and entropy

Genetic, memetic, and evolutionary

algorithms

Modeling and simulation

Rumor propagation models (e.g., NSF

program); epidemic-like models

Rumor and gossip theory and

psychological models (e.g., Naval

Postgraduate School)

Rumor propagation dynamics on networks

Modeling theory of mind with decision-

theoretic agents (e.g., PsychSim)

Agent-based simulation of geo-political

conflict

Internet and cellphone networks

Page 38: DEFINING MEMES - Semioticon

PROSPECTIVE EXPERIMENTAL TOOLS AND

TECHNIQUES Neuroeconomics tools

Neuroimaging

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

(fMRI)

Positron Emission Tomography (PET)

Genetic profiling

Psychopharmacological manipulations

Psychophysiology (electromyography

(EMG), event related potential (ERP), and

electroencephalogram (EEG))

Behavioral measures

Psychological testing

Blood chemistry (and hormone) analysis

Single neuron recording

Example: FMRI scans have revealed:

Political disparities in brain areas

Mirror neurons reflecting social cues and

behavior of others and related to empathy

and altruism; lie detection